


Visiting Hours

by morelikeassassin



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: A monster is very non-graphically stabbed, If this were a romance it would be a meet-cute, but I am too in love with the idea of Awkward Found Family, some violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:34:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26603794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morelikeassassin/pseuds/morelikeassassin
Summary: Michael has been left to mind the office while the others are out on a case. This isn't unusual, and he has no reason to expect that it will be eventful or at all dangerous. He also has no reason to expect that Gerard Keay was planning to swing by with a delivery.
Relationships: Gerard Keay & Michael Shelley
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23





	Visiting Hours

**Author's Note:**

> By my maths, three-ish things are true upon the escher drawing that is my presumed timeline:
> 
> 1\. Michael Shelley and Eric Delano were friends, meaning that Eric must have mentioned his beloved infant son at least once or twice before his death.  
> 2\. Michael is approximately a decade older than Gerry.  
> 3\. It is a finite law of the universe that an individual 17 years or older, when presented with someone younger than them, will adopt the younger party immediately.

The archive could never be empty.

It was an unwritten rule of the Magnus Institute, and it was about the only thing that gave Michael Shelley comfort while working there. There was always the possibility of researchers to help, statements to take, visitors to welcome, and occasional officers of the law to politely but firmly turn away. Michael hadn’t encountered the last category himself yet, nor taken a live statement, but he was well informed of the procedures. This wasn’t his first time being left alone in the archive. The department needed someone to be its face as much as it needed a heart or a head.

For most of Michael’s time there, that someone had been Eric Delano. He hadn’t had the same rigorous curiosity that drew Gertrude and Emma (and, by association, Michael) out of their workplace. Instead, he had been more than happy to spend the day actually getting work done in the office, puttering through the shelves while the others were out. There was something domestic about it that Michael always found pleasant. Like having someone to come home to. He liked to think that he provided that to others now that the role was his.

Which is why, when he found a young man sparking at a cigarette in the main office, his first reaction was to put on a smile.

“Excuse me?” Michael said brightly. The young man - really, he was a boy, if a very tall one - the boy looked up with no particular amount of alarm. “I’m sorry, you can’t really smoke in here.”

The boy looked skeptical, but stowed his lighter. “Uh-huh. D’you work here or something?”

“Yes, my name’s Michael,” Michael informed him. “I’m one of the archival assistants. Can I help you find something?”

“Sure,” said the boy, “I’m looking for Gertrude.”

As Michael approached, he got a better look at his guest, from the shoulder-length black hair to a long black duster jacket that didn’t really match the weather outside. His boots were planted firmly on either side of a shoebox. The cardboard had been reinforced to an almost comical extent, ribbed with strips of duct tape and bearing a haphazard line of staples along the edge of the lid. It looked like it had been sat on at some point.

“She’s not in at the moment,” said Michael. “If you need to drop that off, I can put it on her desk and tell her you came by. What’s your name?”

“Err… Gerry, but I shouldn’t leave this unsupervised,” Gerry said nervously. As he spoke, a soft thump came from inside the box at his feet.

“Is something in there?” asked Michael. His voice jumped up about half a very alarmed octave.

“Well, yeah,” said Gerry, who seemed more perturbed by Michael than whatever was in the box. “What, you thought I just brought her an empty box?”

“No, I- something  _ alive, _ ” Michael protested.

Gerry puffed out his cheeks with an exaggerated sigh. “Wow. That’s actually a really neat philosophical question. I’m gonna say no, for most textbook definitions of ‘alive.’”

“Something moving, then,” said Michael. He took a step forward, and Gerry leaned away as though he wanted to retreat but was rooted to the spot around his charge. “Why don’t we get that somewhere more secure? Whatever it is, I’m sure artefact storage will know how to keep it safe until Gertrude gets here.”

Gerry eyed him suspiciously. This was a new experience for Michael, who had long since resigned himself to looking like the kind of person who confused strangers could approach for directions.

“...fine,” said Gerry, “Just don’t touch it, alright?”

“That is more than alright with me,” said Michael. Even he knew better than to touch foreign objects in the Archive. He stood at a safe distance as Gerry awkwardly managed to pick up the box without relinquishing his stance.

Gerry stared at it for a long moment.

He shook it slightly in place.

He flipped it over to reveal a large hole torn in the bottom.

“Well, shit,” he concluded, "You wouldn't happen to know what time Gertrude's coming back, would you?"

"Not for another hour, I think," said Michael. He peered inside the box to see that the inside had been padded with some sort of steel wool. It was smeared with a dark, glistening substance that might have been blood. Something inside smelled like an electrical fire.

“Great!” Gerry said brightly. “That means we’ve got one hour to find the thing before she comes back and kills me.”

“What exactly did you  _ bring _ in here?” Michael demanded.

“Funny story, that. It acts like something Dark, but it’s more along the lines of Beholding,” Gerry explained. Seeing Michael’s blank look, he changed tactics. “Ahh. You’re  _ that _ assistant. Tell you what: It’s a little hard to describe. You should probably just look behind you.”

This backfired somewhat, as Michael let out a yelp and immediately crashed into Gerry when he whirled around. Across the room, something darted into a wastepaper bin and upturned it over itself, hissing angrily.

“What was th-”

“Keep your eyes on it,” Gerry screeched, “I don’t bloody know what it’s called, now get  _ off! _ ” He struggled to navigate Michael’s flailing limbs until they were both standing. Michael stared dutifully at the overturned bin, waiting for some noise, some movement, some indication of threat.

“I didn’t get a good look at it,” he said rather aimlessly, “It moved like a… rat? Or a lizard? But the legs were wrong, how- how does it have legs like that?”

Even that wasn’t accurate to what he’d seen. His mind scrabbled at physical descriptors that didn’t quite fit, and quickly settled into more visceral ones. The thing in the bin looked like the sensation of finding one more step than you expected at the bottom of the stairs. It looked like the silhouette of the laundry bin just after the lights were turned out, transformed into something monstrous and alien.

“Don’t think too hard about it,” Gerry cautioned him. “The only people who know what it looks like are really, really dead. What it is isn’t important, it’s  _ where _ it is.”

Michael was not comforted by the fact that it had managed to find an even more flimsy containment than a cardboard box with some metal in it 

“Okay,” said Michael, “Okay, what does  _ that _ mean?”

Gerry grimaced at the bin, unwilling to break his gaze for a proper eye-roll.

“It means,” he said slowly, “That it’s where we think it is, until it isn’t. You saw it go under there, right?”

“Right…?”

“And as long as we don’t see it leave, it’s still there, right?”

“...right.”

“But if we look away, then we can’t see whether it’s left, so it could be anywhere.”

“So we’re hunting… Schroedinger’s lizard-rat,” Michael summarized. The bin gave a taunting little rattle to punctuate his statement.

“Sure, brilliant,” said Gerry. “You should write a book.”

“Hang on, does that mean you used me as bait?” Michael asked.

“How d’you mean?” Gerry replied. There was a hint of a smile in his voice that answered the question.

“When you told me to look behind me,” said Michael. “It wasn’t actually there, was it?”

There was a short pause. Michael wished that he could have looked sternly over at Gerry.

“It was there after you looked,” said Gerry. “If it makes you feel any better, you saved us  _ loads _ of time trying to find it. Plus, like, some moderate to severe skin lacerations.”

“Great,” Michael said glumly.

“Speaking of which, have you got any knives?” 

“No?” Michael exclaimed. “I mean, not personally.”

“What-?”

“Probably in the break room, alright?” said Michael. “We’ve got one for cutting birthday cakes, I don’t know if it’s sharp enough to- Are, are you planning to kill that thing?”

“Yeeeeah,” Gerry said, drawing the word out reluctantly. “I was really hoping to show it to Gertrude. It’s right weird and I figured she’d be interested. Probably not so much if it’s loose in her office. You go get that knife, I’ll stay here with the liz-rat.”

“No!” Michael protested. “No, what if it gets out? I don’t want you getting hurt.”

That threw him off guard. “It’s totally safe. As long as I’ve got my eyes on it, I’m good.”

“But-” Michael took a second to try and come up with an argument. “It’s already escaped once. N-no offense, but- But what’s going to happen if it escapes again? What if you need help?”

“Hey,” said Gerry, “Look at me.”

“Um-”

“Nope, right, don’t look. Listen,” he continued. He sounded like he was trying to be reassuring but not very practiced in it. “Listen to me. I’m  _ good. _ I’ve wrestled worse stuff. Go get me a knife, and I’ll prove it to you.”

Michael kept his eyes on the bin until he had to turn towards the break room.

He wasn’t sure why he’d argued. Gerry seemed to know what he was doing, enough to explain while he was doing it. And shouldn’t Michael be mad that this strange young man used him as bait? The thing was, though, that he  _ was _ quite young. As Michael rummaged quickly through the silverware drawers, he wished he could convince himself that maybe Gerry just didn’t look his real age. Maybe he was imagining the teenaged squeak in his voice. His stomach had begun to churn at the idea of leaving him alone with a monster, and now that he had done it, he couldn’t help but picture himself returning to the main room to find the creature missing and Gerry bleeding out on the floor.

As Michael’s hand closed on a large kitchen knife, something crashed to the floor from the main room, followed by a string of curses. Michael bolted for the door to find Gerry standing on top of his desk looking frantically around him.

“What happened?”

“Damn thing  _ cheated _ ,” Gerry muttered. He looked up at Michael and gestured accusingly into thin air. “I heard it halfway across the room, and it buggered off when I turned to look.”

“Did it hurt you?” asked Michael. Gerry stopped being frustrated and embarrassed for long enough to look genuinely surprised that Michael cared.

“No,” he said, “I’m fine. Pass me the knife, alright?”

Michael formulated a plan on his way to the desk. Despite what he feared was popular consensus, he was not a stupid man. He just ended up missing a lot of information he needed to make smart decisions. It was his own fault, really, for not asking better questions, or maybe for not paying enough attention. He wasn’t sure. It was part of the reason he’d gone into research in the first place, which he’d been informed was yet another of his not very smart decisions. As he handed the knife over to Gerry, he resolved to make this time turn out differently.

He cocked his head sharply and grabbed the wastepaper bin. Gerry tensed, raising the knife.

“What, what is it?”

“Shh,” Michael said with easily twice as much confidence as he actually had. He approached one of the other desks, turning so that Gerry couldn’t see his face. Then, with a deep, bracing breath, he closed his eyes.

“Seriously, what the fuck are you doing?”

“I heard something,” he lied. He surreptitiously nudged at the desk with his foot until he found the corner. “I think it’s- there!”

He dove to the ground, slamming the bin over something that was probably there. His eyes snapped open in time to catch Gerry vaulting off of his desk towards him, knife poised at the ready. Quickly, Michael began to shake the bin as if something was trapped underneath. He worried that his expression wasn’t quite panicked enough, but honestly he was starting to panic simply because he couldn’t tell what Gerry thought of his acting.

Something that was very suddenly under the bin  _ growled. _ Michael’s brain went sort of blank for a second; later, he would remember freezing up and screaming something that may have been words. He was briefly aware when the knife plunged directly between his hands, and when something else started screaming along with him, but the next thing he remembered after that was blood spurting from the bin like a clogged fountain pump, and something inside making a noise to match. He nearly screamed again when a hand settled on his shoulder.

“Deep breaths,” Gerry cautioned him. Michael took some deep breaths. “It’s alright, you can look now.”

“Is it-” Michael’s gaze snapped immediately to Gerry’s face. “Did you-”

“Yep,” Gerry confirmed. He wiggled the knife proudly, splattering around some of the blood that coated the lower half. If he noticed, he didn’t seem to care. Maybe it was the adrenaline of the moment, but Michael nearly felt angry at just how calm he looked. “Told you,  _ way _ easier with two people.”

They decided to slide something under the bin so that Gerry could take it outside without actually touching it. Michael produced a thick manilla folder for the job, then a second one when blood soaked completely through the first. Not for the first time in his career, he worried that whatever the cleaning staff was being paid to venture down into the archive, it wasn’t enough. They paused at the door to the stairs, and Michael considered walking Gerry out to the front entrance.

“How are you planning to, erm… Get rid of it, if you can’t look at it?” he asked.

“Ehh, you know,” Gerry shrugged. “Set it on fire, I guess. I know a girl who could get it into a trash compactor, but then it’s a whole thing, and she’s got enough on her plate as it is.”

“Do be careful,” Michael told him one last time. Gerry smiled, looking almost guilty.

"Thanks," he said, "For- For everything, I mean. These things are nasty to deal with on your own, and… This was cool. How’d you catch it, anyway?”

“I didn’t,” said Michael. "Not until you thought I did." Gerry's smile grew immediately less awkward.

“Oh, you prick!” he laughed. “I take it back, I'm leaving you a bad yelp review. You specifically."

“ _ Now _ who’s going to be in trouble with Gertrude?” said Michael, exactly as Gertrude Robinson opened the door from the other side.

Michael stared at her.

She stared at Gerry.

Gerry stared at blood-soaked paper that covered the wastepaper bin he was cradling

“For both your sakes,” Gertrude said after a long few seconds, “It had better be someone not in this room.”

* * *

Gertrude never got into the habit of announcing her assistants before they entered her office. She found it terribly childish whenever James did it to her, and suspected that she would have come to the same conclusion even without the poor example. She did, however, give herself a leisurely minute or two to shuffle away some sensitive documents when she clocked Michael Shelley bearing down the hall towards her.

“It’s open,” she called out when he knocked. As he entered, Gertrude noticed a particular nervous energy that meant he was upset about something, like there wasn’t room for all of his emotions inside of his preposterously tall body.

“Right,” he said. “Okay. So. I think it’s about time we had a chat about the elephant in the archive.”

Gertrude adjusted her glasses at him. “Would this elephant happen to be a young man with a talent for property damage? Possibly of the gothic variety?”

“Yes,” Michael hissed, as though it was some kind of secret. He nudged the door mostly closed behind him. “Gertrude, you have- There’s just, a child, around, setting things on fire.”

“You know, I’m surprised that you went through the trouble of making me tea if you’re really that cross with me,” said Gertrude. Michael stood dumbly for a moment, the two steaming mugs in his hands held steadily as anything.

“Of course I made tea,” he said, scowling. “I’m not an animal.” He pushed Gertrude’s mug across the desk, sitting across from her with his own.

“Gerard is an associate that I picked up outside of work,” Gertrude explained calmly. Michael looked confused at the name for a moment, briefly enough that Gertrude didn’t feel the need to clarify. “It suits my needs to have contacts with different areas of expertise. I fear the Institute attracts a specific type of employee.”

“I get that,” said Michael. “I’ve met Dekker, he’s… very Dekker. What’s concerning is how this one’s barely old enough to buy beer.”

"And I suppose you think I'm taking advantage of that?" asked Gertrude.

"No, I- I just have a lot of questions," Michael said adamantly. Gertrude smiled at that. A very specific type of employee, indeed. "Where did you find him? Where are his parents? Do they know he's working here, with you? Does anyone know?"

It took some reasonably complex maths to determine what Gertrude could tell Michael without breaking him. The illusion of her own innocence was too precious to give up over an argument like this, and if he really pressed the matter she could just put a little more effort into keeping Gerard out of the archive. Michael was easy to lie to. He wanted to believe whatever Gertrude decided to tell him. It was, at the end of the day, the crux of their professional relationship.

All the more reason to use up her goodwill sparingly. Besides; the truth would be just as easy to believe, filtered properly.

“That is Eric Delano's son,” Gertrude told him. “His mother passed away recently. I was in a position to help, and he's been quite eager to return the favor. I doubt very much that he'd stay if he didn't enjoy the work.”

Michael’s mouth actually popped open in surprise. “That’s little Gerry?”

“I suppose,” said Gertrude.

Michael was the only one in the archive who had actually liked Eric Delano personally. On some level, Gertrude was aware of that. She hadn’t disliked him- had even mourned him, in her own way. But she wasn’t in the business of fostering friendships under the best of circumstances, which this was most certainly not. In that respect, Michael was her exact opposite. Eric had been content to let him show it. It had seemed a cruel joke to Gertrude after Eric died, but seeing the spark of hope in Michael’s eyes now made her reconsider.

“He’s so tall,” was all Michael could manage to say, as though that was some deeply impressive accomplishment.

“Yes, that does tend to happen,” Gertrude said mildly. “I won’t try to keep you away from him. Not unless he asks me to. But I would suggest you be a bit more careful. He’s rather forgetful, and if I've given him particular safety precautions for an assignment, I wouldn't trust him to pass them on to you."

“Wh- um. I sort of feel like I should be the one keeping him safe?” Michael stammered.

Gertrude surveyed Michael thoroughly. He had clearly not brushed his hair in several days, opting to run his fingers through it until it was as distractingly large as it was yellow and curly. His faded blue sweater vest had only barely enough professional weight to conceal the fact that the button-up shirt underneath was decorated with very small cartoon puppies. There was a blood splatter on his sleeve that he either hadn’t noticed or hadn’t been able to wash out.

“Oh, dear,” she said.

**Author's Note:**

> Listen, hear me out- I know the timeline is mushy. This interpretation of it is in no way a hard headcanon of mine. I also know there's a ton of good Gerry/Michael content where people assume they're the same age, I enjoy it just as much as you do. But there's a part of me that desperately needs Gerry to have an older sibling take care of him, and goddammit I'm going to make that happen.


End file.
